Lots of new Vanguard info released, plus videos & screenshots

[tad10]

Originally Posted by rinthea

I dont think this can be used as an excuse. If you read between the lines, the microsoft deal was shut down because microsoft wanted it pushed out early to cash in and get some revenue back.

A little bird told me sometime this past summer that the reason that MS passed on V:SoH was that there were 13,000 open major bugs and it was clear it would be another year before release.

I have no way of knowing whether the little bird was correct or not and while I know the little bird worked for MS I also know the little bird was not in upper management.

Edit: Thus my concern with a Q1 release.

[Wizerud]

The problem with MMO's these days is that players want everything NOW. Devs have got a little bit smarter at hiding the grind but it's a thinly veiled disguise in practice and ends up just looking like artificial game mechanics.

The whole idea of risk/reward has gone out of the window with these lowest common denominator titles. There's no worlds anymore, just games.

Yeah, I'm completely bored of MMO's right now. Sure is nice not having to pay a monthly subscription for the first time in 6.5 years tho.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Wizerud

Yeah, I'm completely bored of MMO's right now. Sure is nice not having to pay a monthly subscription for the first time in 6.5 years tho.

Same here, good time to get bored though. Console wars!

[Ayeshala]

Originally Posted by tad10

A little bird told me sometime this past summer that the reason that MS passed on V:SoH was that there were 13,000 open major bugs and it was clear it would be another year before release.

I have no way of knowing whether the little bird was correct or not and while I know the little bird worked for MS I also know the little bird was not in upper management.

Edit: Thus my concern with a Q1 release.

That's why MS never manages to get an MMOG out. They don't have the patience for it. It's not like Vanguard is the first case of this happening.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Ayeshala

That's why MS never manages to get an MMOG out. They don't have the patience for it. It's not like Vanguard is the first case of this happening.

Which is true and funny as they have no problem losing billions on a ten-year plan to dethrone the PS2 or taking five-six years to release a new operating system.

Didn't they force AC2 out way before it was ready -- and make Turbine the laughing stock it is today?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by EmiliaEQ

After having been raped about a dozen time in the plaguelands & silithus by
those red-armored human packs (forgot their names).

I can assure you that traveling while extremely boring can still be made interesting.

- Monster Mobs (see Silithus/Plaguelands)
- Ultra Rare RandomTimer Mobs (Lodizal / Stormfeather)
- Quests (See War 1.5 Epic in Eastern Wastes)
- Pseudo NPC Tracking PvP Patrols (Like the Silithus/Plaguelands but
that actually come looking for you) so its zone or veryhardfight die.
.

It's good to know those monster mobs were such an exciting encounter that you remember there names. Me? I SWERVED. Fuck, encounter avoided. Holy shit what a fucking adrenaline rush.

Ultra rare random mobs is great! Too bad they'll be camped 24/7 by the people who want a drop off them. The number of people who just 'happen upon it omgosh!" will be less then 5%. Yes, I know you just happened upon stormfeather once and it made your day, GRATS!!!! Ancedotal evidence is always 100% perfect! And the best part is the 5% who do "just happen upon it!" will have dicked over some guy who's been waiting 47 hours for it to spawn and had gone to make a sandwhich quick. YAYYYYYYY!!!

No, ultra rare mobs leads to 48 hour spawn camping which is fucking gay. I'm not against camps as an idea, but sitting in one spot half afk checking SEQ every 2 minutes to see if something spawned is an experience I never want to see fucking repeated.

Quests aren't random traveling encounters. You're either seeking them out or you're just running around in circles for an hour hoping your random encounter spawns. YAY!

Random patrols would be fine and are already effectively used. Just that they hunt you down would be fine so long as there was a reason. But that would make adventuring in that area more entertaining, not running through it. It's the same fucking shit as the random wandering mobs.

As for the pirate example, here's the problem with your suggestion and theory....how often do parties travel together? MOst of the time you meet at the entrance to the dungeon. In EQ you ran to the dungeon and asked for a group there. Even in WoW you might only have 2 or 3 people running together after you meet in Org/IF/wherever and having the other half of the group be forced to sit around with their thumb up their ass would be even less fun then RANDOM ZERG ATTACK OH FUCK!

Random encounters -inside- the dungeon/adventure area is fine. However, if I wanted a group to get underway but my priest is like, "FUCK, pirate random encounter, it'll be 20 minutes guys. 8(" But maybe you could be ported to the random encounter! Oh wait, then the people getting ported are denied such an awesome traveling experience. 8(((((

And what about when solo? When leveling up it's fine, that's what the random quest starting items off mbos are for. But what about when I'm level cap and in end game gear? When I'm on my way to point B to farm some mats for tradeskill shit or whatever I'm wont to do and along the way I get attacked by a magical dragon and have to go recover my gear from his secret lair and the reward is some cheap piece of shit sword or something...well..fuck that.

All your suggestions will enhance adventuring in a particular area to some degree, yes, perhaps. But they won't make traveling from point A to point B any more exciting. Remember, you're at point A. Your group/raid/friend/objective is at point B. You don't give a flying fuck what's in the middle.

The only way to make travel less boring is if SoE/Blizzard/Sigil would send a hot blonde to my house who'd give me a blowjob everytime I'm running around.

No, hands down it's ultimately won't work. You can't make traveling entertaining. All you can do is make the initial exploring more entertaining. Kinda like how WoW did with a few of it's "go travel to a new area" quests where instead of sending you to a quest hub, they send you to some cave or mini-dungeons instead and you get sidetracked a little.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

If you want to be railroaded with finite play time, then buy a PS2/PS3 and play a single player RPG bud.

Tks for that fucko. Really. Tks.

Time is finite for, you know, everyone?

I play an unhealthy amount yet I still have no desire to spend my time doing something I do not wish to do.

And you are the one bringing up the glorious table top play where the amount of time you can play is strictly controlled by the nature of the environment and going off on tangents really does take away from main story.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

No, hands down it's ultimately won't work. You can't make traveling entertaining.

Sure you can. The problem is it is pretty difficult to make it entertaining the 100th and all subsequent times.

Traveling by foot the first time was entertaining.
Traveling by horse/wolf/kodo/etc the first time was fun.
Traveling by griffon/wyvern for the first time was entertaining. Hell traveling by g/w for the 10th time was entertaining. It just got boring after time #11.

Traveling by controlled flying mount will be cool the first time and boring by time #20 or so.

So, changing mounts makes travel exciting for some limited amount of time.

You could, as discussed, have encounters on the road -- amusing for a while but again boring after the 100th time the ghost ship attacks you as your own your way to the land of whynn to join your buddies in some_random_instance.

You could go PvP -- exciting for a few times not knowing whether some random_toon is going to try and gank you as you're passing by. But again, after the second, or fifth, or tenth time it's just annoying.

You could combine all these methods -- I'd certainly find it entertaining to have a floating ghost ship attack me as I'm flying on my wyvern to some random zone in the outlands.

Everything gets boring over time -- running most of the older 5-mans bores me to tears -- and is one of the reasons I quit WoW.

So of course travel gets boring too -- but come on --none of the MMOs out have tried to make travel less boring (beyond WoW's flying mounts). So its a little early to throw in the towel.

[Lleauaric~EW]

Im looking forward to alot of things with Vanguard...

but not traveling. Traveling fucking sucks in real life, why the fuck should it be fun in a game. I had to travel 300 fucking miles to have dinner at my mother in laws house, not one good damn thing happened the entire way.

Now if a random pack of monster jumped out would that have made my travel more fun? Fuck no, it would have made it more annoying, and I was already annoyed. Whoever said "Getting there is half the Fun" seriously needs to be punched his stupid fucking face. Getting there is a shit sandwich, especially if you didnt want to go there in the first place to eat dry ass turkey, and having to listen to Mariah Fucking Careys christmas album on the way up.
I think I would rather have had monster pop out and kill me.

I dont know what travel is going to be in Vanguard... but I have the feeling it will similar to the above.

[Ayeshala]

Originally Posted by tad10

Which is true and funny as they have no problem losing billions on a ten-year plan to dethrone the PS2 or taking five-six years to release a new operating system.

Didn't they force AC2 out way before it was ready -- and make Turbine the laughing stock it is today?

AC2, True Fantasy Online, Mythica, Vanguard come off the top of my head. I'm sure we will see others over the next few years. Developping MMOGs is hard, takes a lot of time and patience, requires a lot of expensive experimentation. It's still a lot more art than science.

These things don't seem to mesh very well with the way Microsoft Games Studios function. They are not structured to accept a "Will be ready when it's ready" mentality. That serves them pretty well as a take no bullshit publisher of single player games, but makes developping MMOGs under the MGS umbrella improbable.

They might be better served creating a separate division for those games, just like Sony did. For example, I'm confident in saying that what happened over the years at SOE is nothing compared to the horrors that would have occured had the SOE stable games been under the control of the main gaming division. Like it or not, developping MMOGs require a completely different mentality than developping single player games.

On a side note, EA's MMOG positioning might finally take off IF they leave Mythic SEPARATE from the rest of the company, with whoever is in charge of Mythic reporting directly to Probst. If not, Mythic = the next Westwood or OSI.

[Cantatus]

Originally Posted by tad10

Which is true and funny as they have no problem losing billions on a ten-year plan to dethrone the PS2 or taking five-six years to release a new operating system.

Didn't they force AC2 out way before it was ready -- and make Turbine the laughing stock it is today?

Yeah, not to mention killing off True Fantasy Live Online and Mythica before they were released. Taking that into consideration, perhaps it's good that Sigil left them. Seems they really don't have a lot of patience when it comes to things like this. Then again, not like SOE has stellar renown for taking their time...

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Cantatus

Yeah, not to mention killing off True Fantasy Live Online and Mythica before they were released. Taking that into consideration, perhaps it's good that Sigil left them. Seems they really don't have a lot of patience when it comes to things like this. Then again, not like SOE has stellar renown for taking their time...

I can't speak about much of SOE's stuff -- but I've always understood that it was Lucas Arts pushing for the early release of SWG. Given LA's pushing for early releases of single player products (KOTOR II) I believe that. So I'm willing to give SOE some benefit of doubt -- I understand that EQII had lots of issues at release -- but it wasn't the pure disaster that was SWG.

Anyway if Vanguard is still unpolished at release there's no one to blame but SOE (okay Sigil a little).

[Fammaden]

All the talk about ghost pirate ships reminded me of the random spawns on the boat ride from Selbina to Mhuara in FFXI. That actually worked pretty well overall I thought. I suppose it can be a good mechanic when used sparingly and in very specific types of situations. But by and large it is not really a saviour for stale shallow MMO's with too much travel downtime.

The nice thing about doing that on something like a boat ride is that you have a set amount of time you will be traveling on the boat with nothing to do. You can choose to go hide below deck or if you don't want to be afk you can go on top and brave the potential dangers and adventures while you wait for the ride to end. This is different than being waylaid every 10 minutes as you navigate the road from Bumblesticks to Lickheaven for the 80th time that week. That shit just gets annoying because it is shoved down your throat and you lack any control over how, when and why you participate in it. It doesn't make travel more meaningful, just more formulaic and staid.

When you make the player navigate a path manually during travel, he is already interacting with the world and making choices. Popping mobs on him in the process based on nothing more than a roll of the dice ruins travel more than it rescues it. And no realistic amount of human effort can possibly supply a large enough diversity of these random "adventures" to keep them fresh. Not unless the travel is such a rare event that it really isn't boring and mundane in the first place or if the entire game is based around travelling and never stopping, so that the only content generation required are those random road ambushes.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Fammaden

When you make the player navigate a path manually during travel, he is already interacting with the world and making choices.

Eh. On second thought I'd just do it sorta EQ style. Travel on a road by day? no problems. Travel on a road by night? Run like hell or get ass-raped by an undead 20 levels above you.

[Duppin]

Yeah, those who are convinced that MMO travel can't be made exciting never ran through Kithicor at night at level 20.